Working (outside the home) while homeschooling

[LibrarianMom]

Currently, my husband and I afterschool our dd (K). For a variety of reasons, we frequently contemplate taking the plunge to homeschooling. However, I do want to continue working (I love my career and where work) and I need to (I have great health insurance that covers our kids and my husband doesn't). I do have the possibility of adjusting my schedule so I could take some mornings off alternating with my husband and I'm pretty sure I could find another homeschooling mom in our area or someone else who is willing to take care of my children in the afternoon. So, is there anyone out here in WTM-land (besides SWB) who works and can share how they manage?

[StephanieZ]

I currently work PT managing my dh's vet practice. I never worked during our first 8 yrs of mommy hood and hs'ing adventuring, then I worked nearly FT doing what I now do for about 2 years and have since (in the last year or so) managed to train an office manager and other staff to do enough that I'm down to about half time (but still on the hook to go back to FT if someone vital quits or other disaster strikes).

Upon my beginning working, I started hiring household help. First, when I thought I'd just be working PT, I hired a great housekeeper a few days a week to handle the cleaning. Then, when I was really working FT I realized I couldn't school solo adequately so I hired a great 3 day a week governess/tutor in addition to my 3 day a week housekeeper. Noone else can multitask like mom herself, so I find I need to hire more hours of help than I actually work. (Tho my house is kept much tidier by my housekeeper than I'd actually keep it. Love that.)

So, I can't see it making *financial* sense to work and hs unless you can make enough working to pay for help at home and have some left over. Of course, I'm schooling 3 dc, and that takes a lot more time than just one. . . so your picture may be entirely different. I just don't have the energy to do it all as well as I want it done. I find I need three of us (me, my housekeeper and my governess) to be the mom I like to be. :) I guess I have unrealistic expectations for myself, but this is working well for us. . .

One thing to think about is that private school tuition can be lots of $$. If you have good help available in your area, you may be able to readily pay for great household help and still hs (and perhaps still cheaper and BETTER than private schooling). Cleaning help is usually easy to find and that buys you a lot of time (and, for me, a cleaner house!). A governess/schooling helper is a rarer bird and I totally lucked into mine. I can't imagine replacing her and when her dh finishes his degree and they move x-c in 18 mos, I expect to be flying solo again hsing (tho' I'll keep my housekeeper till one of us dies or she gets tired of us!)

[KiminNJ]

Well we were in the same situation as you.... and since we were already HS'ing part time while dd was in PS - it got to be too much of a struggle. We sat down and worked out finances, insurance, costs of daycare for #2 baby and we decided financially and emotionally for our kids it was best for dh to stay home. So - he has been home since 2002 and we pulled oldest dd out of school in 2006 for good. Financially it was a great move because I was the one with benefits and a good salary and I loved my job... come tax time with only one income we make out great. Yes we had to learn to limit dinners out etc. - BUT it's so worth it! I pretty much do the planning for him and curriculum choices etc. and he is "executes" the plan. :D The kids love it - and he has gotten over being the "token dad" at all the HS events. He even teased me last week that the women now realize he can put all the tables away after co-op... :lol:

[Laurel T.]

I cannot wait to read the responses here. I am committed to homeschooling, and am really struggling with making some career decisions right now. I pray that I am able to find something flexible. Knowing that it is doable really helps.

Laurel T.

[PariSarah]

We're both currently full-time PhD students and we're imagining life after graduation to involve me working full time as a tenure-track professor and him working at least half-time as a pastor. Or maybe both of us pastoring and doing a little teaching on the side. We'll homeschool as long as it's the best option--we're not 'Til Death Doth Us Part Homeschoolers.

You're welcome to email me if you'd like to chat more, but the short, short version is:

It's hard.

It can probably work if you both have flexible jobs. It is not outside the realm of possibility if one of you has a flexible job.

I'm sure there are people out there with "traditional"-minded husbands who could make it work, but I'm not one of them. My dh is a full partner in homeschooling, parenting, and housework; I could not and would not be doing this otherwise.

It's good work, work worth doing, work that I'm proud of. But it's hard work.

I'm hoping it will get slightly less hard when we have a real income. Our biggest problem is that we're short on both time and money. If your dual career means that you have some discretionary income with which you can "buy" time (cleaning help, babysitting, tutoring, convenience food), it might not be quite so hard for you as it is for us. But that might be wishful thinking on my part.

[PariSarah]

Okay. I can do that.

So, our schedule changes every semester, but the long and short of it is, we manage to arrange our class and teaching load so that each of us gets three full (long) days a week at school, and three days at home. We take Sundays off and do something fun, relaxing, family-oriented.

The person who's at home parents and keeps house; before the baby was born, that person also tried to squeeze in a wee bit of his own work while ds9 worked. Post-baby, that person just tries to keep his head above water.

The person who's at work works.

Even three long days is not enough time to get our work done, so we send ds9 to a homeschooling enrichment program two mornings a week and to a French babysitter (to keep up his second language) for about three to four hours a week. This used to be effective study time. Post-baby, it's just parenting-one-less-child time.

Some things that "normal" homeschooling parents do just don't work for us, because time (and money) are so pressed for us. We haven't found homeschooling or babysitting trade-offs with other parents to be very efficient uses of our time. We also don't do co-ops, conventions, support groups, etc.

The biggest and most important thing is: We do a B+ job of almost everything, almost all of the time. Nobody wants to do a B+ job, but we can't do it all and do an A+ job on all of it. So, we shoot for a B+ on everything (on the housework, on the schoolwork, on our own work, on being a good parent, a good spouse, good children to our own parents, etc.). And then we pick one thing every week that we'll do an A job on.

That keeps us from A) killing ourselves trying to keep up with everyone else's standards or B) (in the other direction) always neglecting everything but what's most urgent.

So, I'm just rambling rather than going to bed, which is stupid. So I'll go to be. But feel free to PM me if you want more details or if I can be of help at all.

[Rachel]

in that my kids are older, so child care is not an issue for us. However, I recently went to work after 16 years at home and we have found something that works for us. I work at the local hospital and I work swing shifts.......2-11pm. This way I'm home during the day to homeschool, I'm not home so late that I can't get up in the morning........it works.

We do have someone who cleans the house every 2 weeks (I did this even before I started working though)

[GVA]

I work full-time part of the year, but recently decided to cut back some in the fall because DH may retire on disability and we are talking about relocating (sh...sh...don't tell the kids). I need to get the house ready to sell and we plan to significantly downsize.

Anyway, it's easier the older your children are. Mine are both literate and work independently a lot, so that's a big help. They aren't big enough to stay home alone though, but almost. I use largely scripted curriculum.

We also don't do support groups or field trips. We belong to a weekly co-op and are involved in a small monthly activity and one year-round sport, and that's it.

If you do it, you have to let go of the visions of the "typical" (whatever that is) homeschooler. You won't be, and you'll need to streamline a lot of things.